It was Bonaventure who offered the thought: "In order that we may be able to extol and glorify God, and in order that we may advance to the knowledge of God, we must transfer to the divine that which pertains to the creature . . . nearly all creatures possess certain noble characteristics which furnish a source for our understanding of God, e.g., the lion possesses fortitude; the lamb, meekness; the rock, solidity; the serpent, prudence--hence it is necessary that many names be transferred to God."
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Not long ago, I learned that thirty-eight percent of my retirement account has vanished and that my house is suddenly worth less than the mortgage I am paying on it. I wasn't wasteful or reckless. I didn't vandalize my own home or spend my life's savings on riotous living. But all of a sudden, through no particular fault of my own, a major part of my stash of money (small though it was) simply disappeared.
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In the New Testament, the Greek word for bishop is the term episkopos. The word episkopos has a rich and fascinating history. It is made up of a prefix epi and a root scopus. We get the English word scope from this root. A scope is an instrument we use to look at things. We have microscopes to look at little things and telescopes to look at things that are far away. The prefix epi serves simply to intensify a root. There is, for example, knowledge (gnosis) and profound knowledge (epignosis). There is desire (thumia) and passionate desire or lust (epithumia).
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I'm connected to royalty. Granted, it's a rather thin point of union. In less than six degrees, though through enough marriage links that there is no legal tie, I am connected with the king of the tropical island, Yap. Yap is best known not for its sandy beaches nor its pineapple harvest, but for its money. They do not traffic there in sea shells. Neither is their money pure gold. Instead their coinage is great wheel-shaped stones that are hollow in the middle, some as tall as a coconut tree. What can we learn from this about the people of Yap? First, that they are not given to hasty exchanges. It takes a commitment to trade goods and services for stones. As cumbersome as barter can be, it's likely more easy than rolling a ton of rock down to the local bank. Second, while neither thieves nor robbers are apt to make off with the booty, it is likewise likely that there isn't a great deal of foreign trade. That is, not many outside of Yap would want this money.
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One of the premier Bible study software tools available today is Logos. Logos is perhaps best known for its digital library resources, but it has also made great strides in its original language research capabilities. In fact, at the present time, it has one original language capability that no other Bible study software program has.
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In 1993, David Wells published a book entitled No Place For Truth: Or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology? This book was intended as a wake-up call to an evangelical church that had lost its way, having allowed modernity to replace Scripture as the primary shaper of its thought and practice. This book remains one of the most significant Christian books published in the latter half of the twentieth century. If you know a pastor or seminary student who has not read it, buy it as a gift for them. In his follow-up book, God in the Wasteland, Wells outlines some of the things that will have to be done in order to reverse the situation he described in the first book. In his third volume, Losing Our Virtue, Wells looks at the disintegrating moral culture in America and calls the church to face up to this challenge. The fourth volume in this series of books is entitled Above All Earthly Pow'rs: Christ in a Postmodern World. In this powerful book, Wells confronts postmodernism with the gospel of Christ.
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In a sense we are fortunate that we cannot see God. If for one second the veil were removed and we caught a brief glimpse of the face of God, we would perish instantly. His effulgence is so brilliant, His glory so dazzling, that in our present corrupted state we could not bear the sight of Him. He remains invisible both as a curse and as an act of protecting grace. As long as we remain infected by sin we are doomed to wander in His world sightless with respect to Him. We may be comforted by His Word and healed by the secret ministration of His Spirit, but we cannot see the supreme beauty of His face.
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"Where there is no vision, the people perish" (Prov. 29:18, KJV). We hear this verse quoted frequently in order that we may be inspired and challenged to move with intensity toward a future goal. We applaud the leader who is a visionary, one who can paint a picture of a better future and show us the way to attain it. We are a goal-oriented society. We need a dream, a target to aim for if we are to get our adrenaline moving and our passions stirred.
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